"Publishers don't know jack..."

[Brother Zag]

Maybe I'm just a cynical up and coming writer, but I think Grant coulda stopped that sentence about Publishers not knowing jack about comics a couple words early! This makes his next point especially true. The comics industry should be extremely wary of letting these failing (and flailing) tastemakers dictate what comes out in graphic novels.

Book publishers at this point in time make me think of orchestra conductors on the Titanic, playing happy tunes and partying as if nothing's wrong while their industry shrinks and shrinks. The book industry has nothing to be proud of in the last year. Sturgeon's law means 90% is automatically crap, but the other 10% wasn't anything I was interested in picking up. The only vaguely interesting book on the Top Ten Books Lists for 2008 I've been seeing is "The Ten Cent Plague" and that's not just because I'm a comic fan. "Plague" would not be on my list of Bests. I thought the book was poorly organized and workmanlike in its prose. Unless you're a celebrity (loosely defined - have you been in the news lately? Great!), run in New York City faux-celeb circles, or writing a sequel to an earlier successful book, you don't have any chance of getting noticed by the publishing industry.

That's why the next "big book" we're hearing about now is coming from that f'tard "Joe The Plumber" who isn't really named Joe and isn't really a plumber. The whirlpool effect of the publishing industry's navel gazing has sped the shrinking of the industry, just as it did for the music industry.

Luckily, the internet is intervening in this case as well, as "unpublished" authors can self publish and self promote thanks to the web thingy here. I'm doing it, self publishing and selling around 500 books so far through POD, working the free audiobook angle through ITunes and Podiobooks.com to the tune of over 100,000 downloads... and I'm on the lower end of the new authors who are making their mark this way.

I'm with Grant on this... Don't let the "publishing industry" ruin comics, too!

[Michael P]

Hey, it's not like most comics publishers know jack, either. A lot of them succeed by accident.

[Dennis]

They published Stephenie Meyer and that Twilight stuff. They did something right.

[Michael P]

They published Stephenie Meyer and that Twilight stuff. They did something right.

From a financial point of view, certainly. From every other point of view, they did something horribly, unforgivably wrong.

[Brother Zag]

From a financial point of view, certainly. From every other point of view, they did something horribly, unforgivably wrong.

Wow, thank you for that, Michael P! I won't argue about comic publishers, either. None of them have picked up my Panthea Obscura... 55,000+ page views on Drunk Duck says I might be doing something right there, too. But none thought it had commercial potential. I ain't made any money yet, so they could be right ;)

[bartl]

The only vaguely interesting book on the Top Ten Books Lists for 2008 I've been seeing is "The Ten Cent Plague" and that's not just because I'm a comic fan. "Plague" would not be on my list of Bests. I thought the book was poorly organized and workmanlike in its prose.

One major (and admittedly personal) problem I had with "The Ten Cent Plague" was its downplaying Gilberton's role in the whole thing, treating it like it was separated from the problem. The ignorance was probably due to the fact that Gilberton's efforts were largely in the broadcast rather than print media, but in radio and television coverage, Gilberton was at the forefront fighting censorship (the fact that it was harder to knock down Shakespeare than Superman, plus the fact that they were willing to go into the trenches, made for better debates).

[bartl]

From a financial point of view, certainly. From every other point of view, they did something horribly, unforgivably wrong.

Can you please expand this? Somehow, it sounds to me like, "Yeah, we managed to recover the trapped miners, but look at our laundry bills!"